


Graceless

by somegunemojis



Series: Tender Mercies [34]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Trust Issues, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26302837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somegunemojis/pseuds/somegunemojis
Summary: Your love is a blade and I will use it to cut myself open and I will bleed all over you, and you will let me, because it's all we know how to do.
Relationships: Bettino Tahan/Ihab Rahal
Series: Tender Mercies [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893175





	Graceless

October, 2019 -- VR, Italia.

Evenings like this, he’s absolutely frantic. His blood feels like it’s boiling, and his legs are restless, and Ihab is watching him pace a hole into the floor in his living room with some mixture of bored, concerned fascination. It’s most likely that the boredom is affected, or maybe it’s most likely that the concern is affected-- Bettino can hardly tell, when he’s like this, when his mind won’t let him settle. He’s too busy planning, worrying, it’s making the hairs at the nape of his neck stand on end and he needs to remember, needs to remember. 

He needs to remember: the only person he can depend on is himself. 

Bettino sits, finally, and Ihab takes that as an invitation to press himself close, hip to hip and thigh to thigh, and he settles his hand high up on Bettino’s thigh and squeezes, just a little, and then takes the way his legs fall open as a further invitation to lean forward as if he were going to kiss him. 

But no, no. That’s not right-- Bettino needs to remind himself, he needs to remember that the only person he can depend on is Bettino Fucking Tahan. His own plans, his own cold heart. He needs to remember that anyone else would sooner slit his belly and feast on his entrails than give him any kind of help, and he needs to remember that Ihab himself is the most likely candidate for backstabber of the year-- selfish, wild, and soldato of the Caito Famiglia. Ihab Rahal, he needs to remember, is the only man alive that can get him to roll over and show his belly, and he’s just as likely to rip out his throat as he is to lean down and kiss him tenderly, the way he’s about to do right now. 

Bettino puts two fingers to his chin that stop him just a few centimetres from planting a kiss on his throat that he knows will make him forget about every problem he’s ever had for a little while, and he knows that’s what will happen because that’s what’s always happened before. Ihab stops with the lightest bit of pressure, and leans away when he continues to apply it, watching him carefully. “Do you love me?” He can hear, in his voice, that he sounds almost… lost. Lost in his own thoughts, or lost in Ihab’s thoughts, distant, a little confused. 

A long pause, where Ihab eyes him and considers his answer. Bettino knows what it’s going to be long before he says it because he knew the answer before he asked it, and he knows what’s going to come out of his mouth is going to be a lie. When Ihab’s quiet “no,” rends the air between them, Bettino has already pegged it for an untruth in his head, and he’s watching for the way the corner of his eye twitches, and the faintest grimace in the edges of his mouth. After all, Ihab had just watched him pace and worry and quietly lose his mind with all the patience of one of his Saints, and he hadn’t opened his mouth once to needle him or try and tear him open. And when Bettino had sat down, Ihab had leaned close like he was going to try and take his mind off of things in the only way he knew how. If that wasn’t love, if that isn’t love, then what is?

But they have to keep up the fucking charade, don’t they?

Still, he presses on, because he needs to remember. He tilts his head to watch Ihab’s face out of the corner of his eye, and he echoes a conversation past. “Will you ever love me?” He asks, his voice sounding almost amused, the most color it’s had all night, now that he can make himself focus on just one thing. Just one thing. Even if that one thing is just tearing a hole in the both of them. Will you ever love me, he asks, instead of have you always loved me, because he knows the answer to both and neither and he needs Ihab to lie to him and prove him right. 

Ihab’s nostrils flare briefly, and his temper flashes hot in his eyes before he shutters every ounce of that familiar heat and he turns his voice positively glacial, the raging inferno quieted to something cold and harsh and punishing in its entirety when he bares his teeth and he drawls “no” all over again. 

That’s good. That’s the right thing to say. Bettino knows it’s a lie but he needs it not to be, right now, so he chooses to believe him the same way that Ihab chose to believe the words the last time, because he needs to use that to cut himself open and bleed all over the both of them, and he needs to remember that he can never trust the snake he brought to bed with him. Ihab doesn’t love him, and he never will. Bettino doesn’t love him, and he never will. They’re considered truths because they need to be, in order for this to work. 

He’s not quite sure he has Ihab convinced, because behind that frosted expression he can see him thinking too damn hard, and now that he’s managed to stop his own brain he needs to think of a way to hammer the lesson home for Ihab, too. After all, Bettino Tahan is a wounded dog, and all they ever know how to do is bite. 

He takes Ihab’s face in his palms and he leans close, eyes falling to half mast as they settle on the thin line of his pursed lips. His jaw is clenched so hard that they’re bloodless, because he knows what’s coming next. Bettino’s voice rolls out of him softly, almost inaudible if it weren’t for the scant distance between them. “Good,” he says. Good, because that’s the way it has to be. “One less thing to worry about.” 

Ihab jerks away from him then, slapping his hands away from his face and rocketing to his feet. Bettino watches him with that same placid blankness he always gets when he’s like this, and he continues to bleed all over Ihab’s couch, spilling gore where he’s torn the both of them to shreds with that tender-sweet touch and that careful tone. It’s Ihab’s turn to carry all the restless energy, as he shakes with white-hot rage and something ice-cold that fills him to the brim until it spills out of his eyes and his nose and mouth, without a sound. No sound but the faintest tremor in his voice, the one he only ever gets when he’s begging, and he says, “Get out.”

Somehow, that cuts deeper than all the rest of it. Absently, as Bettino stands and turns his back on him, he thinks he recognizes that particular blade in his chest as guilt.


End file.
